The Guard Enters the Storm
A 152nd Airlift Wing C-130 soars over Carson Tahoe Medical Center as part of the unit’s Salute to Medical Professionals for its flyover of 13 hospitals in northern Nevada and California during the region’s COVID-19 outbreak in April 2020. Photos/Brad Horn.
By Emerson Marcus
At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in Nevada, following Governor Steve Sisolak’s stay-at-home directive on March 17, 2020, I quarantined and worked from home for two weeks. It soon became evident, though, the Nevada National Guard—where I work as a public affairs officer—would undertake an integral role in the state’s COVID-19 response. More than 1,200 Nevada Guardsmen entered the fight against the virus with many remaining on orders into 2021, the largest and longest state activation in Nevada Guard history. Most missions aligned with testing, contact tracing, warehousing, and distribution of personal protective equipment.
On April 3, I was assigned to the state’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), under Emergency Support Function 15, or external affairs, working for Nevada Guard state public affairs officer, Lt. Col. Mickey Kirschenbaum. Under the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s national response framework, there are 15 support functions, including information and planning, transportation, logistics, public safety, security, and communications among others. Initially, the external affairs team included about a half dozen members in the EOC working to assist the state’s communication efforts. The staff of mostly civilian public information officers also ran the Nevada Health Response website, which included the Department of Health and Human Services dashboard, populated daily with updates on statewide deaths, cases, positivity rate, and various other trends and statistics. So much remained unknown during the first weeks of the pandemic and information moved quicker than any event I’ve worked during my career in journalism and as a military public affairs officer.
Along with responding to reporters and the public, and disseminating information through social media and press releases, I assisted the state with communication campaigns. One campaign, Hero of the Day, highlighted Nevada citizens. The governor announced the campaign during a press conference in early April. Within minutes, calls and emails flooded our office with nominations, which included a single mother of two working as a nurse at the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada; a Clark County School District employee who led food drives for children in need; a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe catching fish to feed tribal elders sheltered at home; and a 14-year-old girl making masks for medical professionals and law enforcement.
We also led a COVID-19 recovery campaign with Nevada citizens explaining their run-in with the virus. One Las Vegas resident, fighting back tears, explained how she and her father contracted the virus and were admitted three rooms apart at Desert Springs Hospital. She survived, but her father died June 21, 2020—on Father’s Day. Another woman, from Sparks, said her entire family got sick, including her brother, who has cerebral palsy. He spent two months in a hospital before recovering. Ronald Pipkins, a Las Vegas resident and Marine veteran, was the first reported case in the state on March 5. Pipkins spent weeks hospitalized in a coma with a fever that spiked to 107°, but lived to tell his story.
Senior Airman Mia Carney, foreground, prepares to take a COVID-19 test sample during the Quad County mobile community based collection site event spring 2020 at Carson High School in Carson City. The Nevada National Guard played a vital role in the state’s efforts to ramp up COVID-19 testing in 2020.
Throughout, though, my focus largely remained on public information surrounding the Nevada Guard. I enjoyed the opportunity to leave the office and visit testing sites, usually with members of the media seeking access. The Guard collected more than 1.2 million test swabs during the first eight months, ramping up the state’s effort to track the spread. One of the Guard’s most important roles became the setup of mobile “strike teams'' for swab sample collection. The state encouraged testing of asymptomatic cases through large scale swab collection sites in Clark and Washoe counties—also staffed by Guardsmen—but access for rural citizens remained limited. To reach remote locations in a state with geographic challenges posed by its position in the Great Basin, the Guard’s strike teams led dozens of strike teams for citizens in rural Nevada and on tribal land. Swabs were then given to the health districts or tribes to conduct tests at the nearest lab. They also led a continuous operation that rotated through the Quad County region (Lyon, Storey, Douglas counties, and Carson City). Each strike team usually included about a dozen guardsmen to set up sites, conduct site administration, traffic control, and collect samples. Other Guardsmen also worked contact tracing and call centers, under the oversight of health districts and the tribes.
The most remote location I visited was in Esmeralda County on August 27 and 28. Nevada’s least populated county made national news when it was reported as one of three counties in the country without a known positive case. Even with minimal or nonexistent transmission, the Esmeralda County Commission that summer asked Ken Elgan, the county’s sheriff and emergency manager, to request a strike team for COVID-19 testing. After the sheriff put in the request to the state Division of Emergency Management, members of the Nevada Guard setup drive-thru locations in Goldfield, Silver Springs, and Dyer. Elgan expressed fear that even a handful of positive cases could force the closure of businesses in Esmeralda County, something he obviously wanted to avoid, but he appreciated the Guard helping determine whether the virus existed there. Many officials such as Elgan were forced to juggle public health with economic stability. “Hopefully, everyone in the county stays positive, or I should say negative, and we can remain the only county in the state without a confirmed case,” Elgan told me. Eventually the county reported a positive case after an election poll worker tested positive in early November. Esmeralda, with a total population of fewer than 1,000, reported 27 cases by mid-December. Statewide, Nevada reported nearly 200,000 confirmed cases and more than 2,300 deaths as 2020 came to an end.
Senior Airman Dawn Harris, 152nd Medical Group, Nevada Air Guard, prepares COVID-19 test sample kits at Carson High School, May 5, 2020.
Of the 1.9 million tests administered statewide in 2020, the Guard collected more than 75 percent of them at the Clark County, Washoe County, and mobile collection sites. I became familiar with many of the Guardsmen working the sites. One of them, Spc. Jermaine Longmire, was a part-time soldier who worked at Harrah’s Reno before the pandemic. Furloughed during the shutdown, Longmire volunteered for the state’s mobile testing team, traveling to various locations in northern and western Nevada. In June, Harrah’s announced it was laying off 471 workers, when Longmire was already working on strike teams around the state. The gregarious 26-year-old soldier was in his element interacting with citizens arriving for a COVID-19 test. For instance, I noticed Longmire greeting tribal members in Paiute and Shoshone at the Yerington Paiute Tribe in July. He was one of the few soldiers who didn’t balk when asked if he was willing to speak with the media for an interview. A majority of the Nevada Guardsmen, like Longmire, were members of the part-time force, known as traditional Guardsmen reporting to duty one weekend a month and two weeks for training each year while holding full-time employment in the civilian workforce. Many temporarily left their civilian jobs to assist the state. Some, like Longmire, were out of work and jumped at the opportunity. All of them made a difference in Nevada’s ability to track the spread of COVID-19.
Another soldier, Maj. Laurie MacAfee, served as the deputy commander of the Nevada Guard’s Task Force Medical. If I needed information on Nevada Guard plans or testing events for the purpose of responding to media questions, I went to MacAfee, who worked in the same building as me at the Guard’s joint operation center in Carson City. At the end of 2019, MacAfee made a full recovery from breast cancer. After the recovery, she chose to return to the military full-time, taking a job as the Nevada Guard’s occupational health nurse and the commander of the Medical Detachment. It was a hell of a time to take on that role. MacAfee displayed great leadership and, as she described, built a plane while in flight. She continued working missions until she was forced to quarantine June 27 when she tested positive for the virus. She experienced a fever and her resting pulse rate spiked to 160. She considered going to a hospital, but monitored herself from home until she recovered and eventually went back to work. “Throughout my bout with COVID-19, I felt tremendous guilt and shame as I waited helplessly to hear if I passed the virus to someone else,” she told me about her experience with the virus. “It’s hard to understand until you’ve been diagnosed with the virus. I spent so much of my recovery agonizing over each person I came in contact, whether my fellow Guardsmen, family or friends.” MacAfee was one of about 250 Nevada Guardsmen who tested positive for COVID-19 in 2020.
On Dec. 14, 2020, I met with Lt. Col. Brett Compston for an hour-long oral history interview about the Guard’s activation. Compston worked as the J3 or the director of the Guard’s joint and domestic operations at the beginning of the pandemic. On March 31, 2020, Governor Steve Sisolak moved the Division of Emergency Management and Department of Health and Human Services under the Nevada Guard. Compston, along with Nevada adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Ondra Berry, and Col. John Week, the director of the joint staff, were tasked to lead state agencies through the pandemic. It was an unprecedented move. In May, Compston took on the role as incident commander at the Division of Emergency Management, working closely with Caleb Cage, the state’s COVID-19 response director. In our interview, Compston described the past nine months as more stressful than an overseas combat deployment. It wasn’t just COVID-19, but also a summer of civil unrest and racial protests that involved the Guard protecting government buildings for potential looting in Reno and Las Vegas. “The magnitude made it different,” he said. “The fear at the beginning made it different. Having the Guard take on such an unprecedented role here in our own state made it different. Every day was non-stop, waking up at 4:30 in the morning and not going to sleep until midnight, and having to do it all over again the next day. Working closely with the governor’s office and making 7-10 huge decisions each day. It was nonstop.” He added: “The Guard’s performance was amazing. The willingness to step up and do the right thing. …It’s humbling what our members have done. We are currently in a third wave, something we planned for and knew could happen. I just pray it doesn’t get worse.”
As the state, nation, and world enters a new beginning in the fight against the virus—now with the benefit of a vaccine—hope is on the horizon. But there’s still work to do. In December, President Donald Trump extended federal funds through March 2021 for the states to keep National Guardsmen working in the fight against the virus. As Nevadans enter this new beginning, in a new year, Nevada’s citizen-soldiers remain ready to assist in the nearly yearlong fight against COVID-19. With its members also citizens in the communities they serve, the National Guard of all states and territories proved best positioned to mobilize for the country’s COVID-19 response. Any retelling or history of the pandemic in the United States would be incomplete without mentioning the work of the National Guard.
Photo/Courtesy of Emerson Marcus.
Emerson Marcus is the state historian for the Nevada National Guard and a first lieutenant in the 152nd Airlift Wing, Nevada Air National Guard, public affairs office. Marcus has a master’s degree in history from the University of Nevada, Reno. Prior to becoming the Nevada National Guard’s state historian, Marcus worked as an investigative reporter at the Reno Gazette-Journal. He lives in Sparks, Nevada with his wife, Sarah, and their two children, Jocelyn, 7, and Brockton, 5.
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